The Hopp Stop

Thanks to Vanessa for the link.

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Here he is with Sister Beth at our old house in Bloomfield. That’s the front window where our Scottie logs would hang out all day, snoozing and barking at anything that went by on Forest Way.

Did Varejao play there in college?

Here’s an interesting quick history of the flop in the NBA. One net of the article: I dislike Doug Collins more than ever.

HoopsHype – Columns – Blame America, not Europe, for the flop: ”

Blame America, not Europe, for the flop
by Dennis Hans / May 15, 2006

Miami coach Pat Riley, upset over the increasing number of offensive fouls called against his center, Shaquille O’Neal, lashed out at foreigners for bringing the flop to the NBA. ‘In this league,’ he said, ‘it’s become an art form, brought, by the way, by the Europeans.’

Alas, not only does Riley sound like the stereotypical ‘ugly American’ with that comment, he’s dead wrong. The flop is as American as Kentucky bluegrass. Maybe Vlade Divac brought a European flair to the stunt when he joined the Lakers – Pat Riley’s Lakers – in 1989, but U.S.-born hoopsters had already been taking dives for decades.

The Chronicle ran an interesting article in Sunday’s sports section about the interplay of Stanford’s admission policies and the success of the sports programs. It’s difficult to determine whether the admissions policies for athletes were tightened under the admissions director who left in 2005, and Stanford fans run the risk of putting too much blame on admissions for recent declines in the highest profile programs, such as men’s hoops (still a solid program), football (abysmal) and baseball (a couple down years, but difficult to figure out the long-term trend-line just yet. As the article states, when a team does well at a school like Stanford, people praise the coach. When a team does poorly, people blame the admissions department. Then again, Buddy Teevens and Walt Harris got the hook for their records.

HIGHER STANDARDS / Stanford teams finding it’s hard to win if athletes can’t get in: ”

Stanford will soon wrap up its 13th straight Directors’ Cup, which recognizes overall success in intercollegiate sports. Many Stanford alumni, however, consider the cup a booby prize, won mainly because the school excels in non-revenue producing sports.
They and some former coaches fear that the football, basketball and baseball teams in particular will be hard pressed to compete unless they get more help from the admissions department…

(Via .)

Check out this blog’s analysis of the Pistons’ D on LeBron in game 5. Most interesting thing is that it appears that RAH-Sheed totally f’ed the help D on some key baskets at game’s end.

The Painted Area: Breaking Down Bron’s 25: Rasheed, Where You At?: “‘In Hubie We Trust’

The Painted Area
Monday, June 04, 2007
Breaking Down Bron’s 25: Rasheed, Where You At?

I couldn’t resist going back to the DVR to take another look at the end of Game 5 of the Cavs-Pistons series, which edges Games 4-5 of the Warriors-Mavs series as my favorite of the 2007 Playoffs because of the surpassing individual performance by LeBron – and the fact that it may herald the ushering in of a new NBA era.

There’s been so much criticism of Detroit’s strategy on D that I was interested to see what they were actually doing. I was especially interested in seeing exactly how DET could have possibly given up three completely uncontested dunks in the halfcourt O down the stretch – seemingly unthinkable against the once-vaunted Pistons D.

What I noticed was this:
- DET *did* double-team LeBron more than I remembered and usually it worked, getting the ball out of his ”

(Via .)